e-commerce Best Practices How Web and Mobile Performance Optimizes Conversion and User Experience

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1 e-commerce Best Practices How Web and Mobile Performance Optimizes Conversion and User Experience

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3 Table of Contents Milliseconds Mean Mega-Dollars...4 Pre-Launch: Testing for Performance...5 Post-Launch: The Importance of Real User Measurement...6 Spikes Happen...7 The SOASTA Performance Value Proposition for e-commerce...8 The New Performance Mandate for Retail...9 Customer Case Studies...10 About SOASTA, Inc...12 Get Started Today...12 SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 3

4 Milliseconds Mean Mega-Dollars Seconds matter. In fact, it s not overstating the case to claim that even the smallest delays can collectively translate into significant lost revenue. Millseconds can mean mega-dollars. In virtually every sector of online retailing today, consumers have no time and less patience. They want a high-quality, reliable buying experience on your website. Simply put they want it now. And if you fail to meet those expectations if you can t deliver sub-second response times and enable the user to immediately engage with your content, products, and apps they re off to visit (and buy from) your competitors. The cliché is true: You don t get a second chance to make a first impression. And that trend has only amplified as more users turn to smartphones and other portable devices for their online shopping. Whether it s revenue, customer traffic, cart abandonment, bounce rates, or length of session, the correlations are consistent: Speed is the No. 1 feature of successful websites because speed translates into a higher quality buying experience. Faster pages mean a better user experience. That translates into better conversion rates and better profitability. And that forms the foundation of the highly sought omnichannel strategy that ties together in-store, mobile, social, and desktop experiences. By optimizing website performance, e-retailers can directly improve the user experience and increase engagement and brand loyalty, as measured by time on site, size/value of shopping cart, and frequency of return visits. How can retailers ensure a consistently high-performance experience for growing numbers of users even during peak seasons/events? How do you keep people coming back, consuming content, using services, spending money, and sharing with friends? The answer is twofold: It starts with careful pre-production load testing to avert preventable disruptions, delays, and failures. And it also means careful real-time monitoring of post-deployment real user experiences so that you can be aware of and respond to unexpected situations as they arise when you have time to take corrective actions before it s too late. Faster pages mean a better user experience that translates into better conversion rates and better profitability. By optimizing website performance, e-retailers can directly improve the user experience and increase engagement and brand loyalty, as measured by time on site, size/value of shopping cart, and frequency of return visits. SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 4

5 Pre-Launch: Testing for Performance Before your site launches or before the big revamp prior to your peak selling season development and testing teams need to ensure the new selling environment is responsive enough to provide a quality experience to the buyer. But given the scale of world-class e-commerce apps, it can be difficult to conduct this performance testing that replicates the load of thousands of simultaneous users. And, performance engineers rarely want to execute a single test. They need to conduct a series of tests that build upon prior test results. SOASTA addresses this need for a series of high-load performance testing with CloudTest. Using real-time analytics, a visual test creation environment, dynamic provisioning of a Global Test Cloud, and the ability to start, stop, pause, and restart tests, CloudTest gives you complete testing flexibility to accelerate the iterative testing process. That acceleration also translates to less time and expense for performance testing. Instead of betting on a single flight of tests right before launch, you can perform more comprehensive testing throughout the development lifecycle and create higher-performing, reliable, and fast e-commerce apps that generate more sales revenue. Using real-time analytics, a visual test creation environment, dynamic provisioning of a Global Test Cloud, and the ability to start, stop, pause, and restart tests, CloudTest gives you complete testing flexibility to accelerate the iterative testing process. SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 5

6 Post-Launch: The Importance of Real User Measurement After you launch when the spikes hit you need to be aware of any disruptions as soon as possible. The key for e-commerce is seeing actual user experiences in a timely fashion. Getting reports days or weeks later won t salvage your sales and marketing losses. You need to know about substandard performance in time to take action. When it comes to these post-launch performance improvements, traditionally, the focus has been on back-end server stability and scalability. And those are certainly worthy initiatives. However, between percent of page load time which is ultimately what the retail customer cares about is spent on the front end, in the browser. That s why retailers must test and measure from that crucial real-world user perspective. The Real User Measurement (RUM) discipline quantifies the correlation between page load time and user engagement and shows where you can optimize performance to directly improve profitability. mpulse, SOASTA s RUM solution, captures and aggregates the performance and engagement metrics that matter most to retailers. That data comes in real time, giving you the real user intelligence that correlates the impact of performance on the bottom line. That means you can take immediate action and feed critical information back into the development lifecycle. Timeliness is everything fresh metrics matter most which is why mpulse analytics collect real time information from real user experiences. Best of all, mpulse is intuitive and accurate. It takes the important pieces of statistical analysis, lets you tailor their presentation, and then conveys them in vivid, compelling, easy-to-understand visualizations. How do these metrics affect e-commerce and other consumer-facing sites? Maybe you re seeing high exit rates on specific pages or uneven conversion rates across the site. Maybe you have high figures for app downloads, but low app usage. These are all symptoms of user experience and user engagement problems. And most often, they can be traced directly back to the technical performance of the site. RUM helps site operators uncover the correlation between site performance and visitor behavior so you can make immediate corrections and optimizations. Real User Measurement (RUM) quantifies the correlation between page load time and user engagement and shows where you can optimize performance to directly improve profitability. SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 6

7 Spikes Happen If only site traffic were a steady, consistent, and predictable component of your e-commerce plan. Of course, that s never the case. Depending on your target market and business strategy, you can see increases in traffic that coincide with a range of internal and external events year round. It s not just the classic holiday shopping scenario. Maybe your business sees greater traffic when summer travel season arrives. It could be associated with March Madness or the start of the school year. Maybe you have monthly or weekly promotions that bring surges in site traffic. Regardless of the source or the reason, spikes happen and you need to be ready. The stakes are high since a disproportionate portion of your revenue and the lion s share of your profit can come in during these peak periods. Everyone recognizes the critical nature of site performance. Yet even well-established e-commerce sites experience visible, sometimes costly performance problems during peak traffic periods. In a recent SOASTA survey, almost half of the respondents experienced slow performance during a peak time in the past year, and nearly three-quarters had experienced slowdowns in the previous two years. Preparing for these traffic spikes is essential and you ll need a fairly long runway to ensure that excellent performance is built in when you need to lockdown your site for peak periods. But the application environment must constantly change. In an agile development world, few businesses can afford to feature-freeze their environment for months. And even if you can efficiently code-freeze your application elements, you re still vulnerable to the variabilities of third-party components CDNs, shopping carts, payment systems, and more that also contribute to the user experience. Clearly, this isn t an easy problem to solve. To ensure fast performance under peak loads, you must commit to performance testing before and after site launch. In 2013, hundreds of major brands representing more than $150 billion in online sales transactions tested, validated, and monitored their global e-commerce sites with SOASTA. In a recent SOASTA survey, almost half of the respondents experienced slow performance during a peak time in the past year, and nearly three-quarters had experienced slowdowns in the previous two years. SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 7

8 The SOASTA Performance Value Proposition for e-commerce For those charged with selling on consumer-facing e-commerce, media, and entertainment websites, SOASTA offers a value proposition that appeals to both business managers and performance experts. Rapid Testing for Rapid Deployment Build your tests faster without coding and deploy cloud-based load servers across the globe in minutes. You can analyze results instantly, while tests run continuously from your own lab or in the cloud. Full Performance Coverage Run in the dev lab through to live production. Cover internal and external traffic with a single solution, while continually testing to any scale. Address the issues you uncover and then iterate and test again. Realistic Testing With SOASTA, you can test using from hundreds to millions of users to meet real-world needs. You can model true user behavior, timing, pace, and scale to accurately stress-test your production environment. Affordable Testing With SOASTA, you pay only for what you need on-demand. There s no need to purchase and provision test hardware. SOASTA s cloud approach reduce pre-test prep time and eliminates high maintenance fees. Information From the Source SOASTA presents a detailed understanding of how web and mobile application performance impacts user behavior. That lets you fine tune and optimize application performance to significantly improve retention, conversion, and profitability. You can eliminate those blind spots by quantifying the true cost of web and mobile performance and using that analysis to make informed strategic and tactical decisions with real-time analytics that report events within seconds of their occurrence. Fast Performance Metrics SOASTA analytics let you tap enormous datasets for meaningful correlation to business metrics. You gain comprehensive insight into your business by capturing 100 percent of all user traffic, regardless of volume. That means you can focus on conversion opportunities and improve your understanding of different patterns and user behaviors. Actionable Insights View and act on the data that matters most with customizable dashboards and standard data views. SOASTA reduces false positives and enables you to direct your resources to the areas that have the biggest impact. SOASTA, Inc. SOASTA offers a a compelling web and mobile performance value proposition that appeals to both business managers and performance experts. e-commerce Best Practices 8

9 The New Performance Mandate for Retail For retail strategists and merchandising professionals, performance is a non-negotiable requirement for both web and mobile shoppers. Without high performance, there is no quality user experience, no favorable brand/ reputation, and no customer loyalty and no sale. Virtually any and every other aspect of the e-commerce enterprise fails if the site does not meet the demanding performance expectations of the market. And the impact can be even greater than you realize. The first-order impact of performance failings is the loss of a sale. While it s difficult to measure the value of a lost customer, the impact is inarguable. Just as important, however, is the second-order effect: reputational/brand damage. When site performance lags, unhappy visitors not only defect to competitors, they also take to social media to publicly express their dissatisfaction, quickly and broadly spreading the damage to your brand and driving away unknown numbers of potential customers. SOASTA provides e-commerce companies with the ability to achieve their strategic goals by translating site speed into improved conversions, increased loyalty, and greater revenue. SOASTA uses the power of cloud computing to quickly and affordably test consumer-facing Web and mobile applications at scale. This proven testing technology, available from the cloud and using the cloud, addresses the limitations of traditional performance testing technologies and methods for today s major e-commerce sites. More importantly, it provides e-commerce companies with the ability to achieve their strategic goals by translating site speed into improved conversions, increased loyalty, and greater revenue. SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 9

10 Customer Case Studies Bonobos Amps up for Stellar Cyber Monday Challenge After its website went down on Cyber Monday in 2011, Bonobos turned to SOASTA to ensure there was no repeat performance. Results After only a few weeks testing Bonobos projected site performance with SOASTA CloudTest On-Demand, the retailer handled Cyber Monday 2012 without a hitch and with eight times more site traffic than expected, launching the company into its biggest holiday season ever. Cyber Monday 2012 delivered more than 15 times in sales than a typical day for Bonobos. At the busiest part of the day, traffic at Bonobos.com reached 64 times its normal levels without a hitch in performance. OZSALE Captures Record $5 Million in Sales During Flash Frenzy Challenge The e-tailer was prepping for a flash frenzy event. And when your first real test is the biggest event you ve ever done, you need the assurance that your site will withstand unprecedented loads. SOASTA helped the popular merchant prep for the massive traffic spikes and eliminate bottlenecks by pinpointing the sources of high CPU utilization and other instabilities at just 10,000 concurrent users. Results With real-time, actionable intelligence on its Web and mobile apps, the company easily handled a successful flash sale: Revenue hit more than $5 million. More than 50% of revenue came in from mobile devices. 80,000 new members preregistered prior to the event. There was a 160% increase in new visitors, a 160% increase in page views, and a 80% increase in unique browsers. SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 10

11 SOASTA Helps Bring Home the Gold for 2012 Olympics Challenge As the official ticketing platform of the London Olympic Games, London2012.com needed to perform optimally on the world stage. The site needed to be able to overcome all of the possible bottlenecks which could prevent the best user experience possible and avoid a catastrophic situation, which could impact the London 2012 brand. Results Final Olympic online totals: 1.3 PB of data served. 1.7 billion object requests billion page (html/htmx) views. App peak of 17,190 pages per second. Web peak of 104,792 pages per second. SOASTA, Inc. e-commerce Best Practices 11

12 About SOASTA SOASTA is the leader in cloud testing. Its web and mobile test automation solutions, SOASTA CloudTest and SOASTA TouchTest, and SOASTA mpulse, enable developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test and monitor users with unprecedented speed, scale, and precision, and visibility. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and analyzes real user behavior in real time distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, delivering quality user experiences every time even in peak traffic. SOASTA s customers are many of today s most successful brands including Avaya, American Girl, Bonobos, Backcountry.com Chegg, Experian, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft, and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit Get Started Today Find out more about how SOASTA e-commerce solutions can dramatically improve the performance of your Web applications. Get started by visiting ecommerce or us at info@soasta.com. Headquarters Castro St, Fourth Floor Mountain View, CA FAX: EMEA New Broad Street House New Broad St. City of London Greater London EC2M 1NH ASIA Room 11/12 25/F Central Plaza N o H u a i H a i M i d d l e R o a d Shanghai, China, To learn more visit: soasta.com or us at info@soasta.com 2014 SOASTA. All rights reserved. SOASTA, the SOASTA logo, SOASTA CloudTest, SOASTA TouchTest and SOASTA mpulse are trademarks of SOASTA. All other product or company names may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Connect with us: TEST FASTER. RELEASE SOONER.